[Warning: This story contains mild spoilers for “Twinless,” which premiered on Thursday at Sundance Film Festival.]
Dylan O’Brien reveled within the strategy of enjoying twin roles in “Twinless,” a twisted comedic drama about two pals who meet in a assist group for individuals who misplaced a twin. The “Maze Runner” and “Teen Wolf” star portrays similar brothers Rocky, who unexpectedly dies, and Roman, who’s left to navigate the insufferable grief with out his different half.
“The twins have been so distinct on the web page. I felt such a distinct connectivity to every of them. That got here actually naturally,” O’Brien says on the Selection Studio offered by Audible. “For me, it’s very bodily. As soon as the method kicks into full gear with costumes, hair and make-up and the issues that [director] James [Sweeney] and I mentioned by way of stroll, speak and posture, that helps me.”
“Twinless,” which premiered Thursday at Sundance Movie Competition, is the sophomore characteristic of Sweeney, who wrote and directed the movie. He additionally stars as Dennis, a fellow bereaved member of the assist group for twinless twins. He and Roman discover solace in one another, forming an unlikely bromance within the course of. To say extra in regards to the story’s twists and turns would spoil the enjoyable, although a part of the journey entails two of the primary characters getting scorching and heavy within the bed room. Sweeney jokes that directing himself in a intercourse scene was “great.”
“It’s simply a part of the story,” Sweeney says. “It’s uncomfortable; there’s the director facet of my mind and the actor facet of my mind. The director is like, ‘That is what must be achieved,’ and the actor is like, ‘Fuck you.’ It’s the warfare I’m at all times battling in my head.”
Sweeney employed an intimacy coordinator to ensure all the pieces ran easily on the day. “Dylan and I had a snug rapport with one another,” the filmmaker says, “nevertheless it by no means hurts to have one other set of eyes on the day.”
O’Brien additionally appreciated the inclusion of the intimacy coordinator, describing the method of filming as “easy crusing” after everybody talked via the scene’s logistics.
“It’s at all times useful as a result of it forces the primary subject of the room to be, ‘How are we going to strategy this?’ Comforts, boundaries, let’s all get it out to start out,” he says.
Sweeney admits that, as a relative newcomer to Hollywood, he was involved about embodying a personality whose selections change into tougher and tougher for the viewers to get behind.
“It was a concern, particularly being somebody that folks received’t be conversant in, that folks will hate me. However I simply needed to make the film,” Sweeney says. “I used to be attempting to string that line and produce empathy and hope that folks can see the worst components of themselves within the character, too.”
Lauren Graham, who performs the grieving mom of the twins, counters the notion that Sweeney’s Dennis might be perceived as unlikeable. “I believe he’s extremely sympathetic,” she says. “That’s why the viewers goes alongside for the journey. As a result of we get it.”
Although Sweeney isn’t really a twin, he believes that fellow ’90s children have been raised on well-known twins of the actual (Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Tia and Tamera Mowry) and cinematic (a convincing Lindsey Lohan) selection. There’s even a scene in “Twinless” the place somebody watches — and completely quotes — the 1995 Olsen twins film “It Takes Two.”
“For my era, rising up with the Olsens, ‘Guardian Lure’ and ‘Sister Sister,’ it permeates via your unconscious,” Sweeney says. “This concept of, not even a doppelgänger, however one other half, is what attracts me to twins. It’s like a soul mate; this one one that utterly will get you and sees you. In an more and more lonely digital panorama, we’re all trying to find that.”